Sculpture and Objects
Bone Totem Owl and its Shadow, 2011

Bone Totem Owl and Bone Totem Owl Shadow, 2011

Bone Totem Owl. White Carrara marble, gold plated bronze details
Size: 92 x 21 inches (234 x 53 cm)

Bone Totem Owl Shadow. Black Belgian marble
Size: 80 x 14 inches (203 x 36 cm)

Bone Totem Owl and Bone Totem Owl Shadow, a pair of elegantly rendered sculptural forms in white and black marble, respectively, are fabricated using the same scanning process as Ashnest, though the change in materials evoke a different aura. The pair gestures toward the birds themselves, in both of their cinematic forms, and in doing so nods to the duality embodied in the pairing of black and white (life/death; visiblity/invisibility) in the shamanic tradition. Just as Ashnest fills in the blanks of the ancient animal’s missing anatomy by deploying a cutting-edge technological device that in some sense “envisions” the missing material, so too does Bone Totem Owl make a connection between knowledge and vision, as the white figure’s eyes have been reimagined as ilgaak, the traditional slitted sunglasses worn by the Inuit people—and, in one of the film’s final sequences, by the artist—to protect against snow-blindness, extending the power of the Lacanian gaze to the owl, as well.

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